The Company of Those Who Have Known Suffering
by clair beaubien
Summary: Missing/tag scene to S12E22, after Dean & Sam ditch the bodies.


Two funeral pyres being hard to hide in Lebanon, Kansas, especially in the dark, me and Sam dumped Ketch and Bevell, wrapped and weighted, into the waste canal outside of town. As soon as they gurgled out of sight I gimped back to the car for the drive home to a hot shower and another round of expired painkillers. Sam followed behind me.

He was quiet. Too quiet. I asked him, "What?" and he looked at me with that pinched expression like he didn't know 'what' or he didn't know what it meant. It seemed like he was going to say something, then he shook his head and stared out his window and I didn't push for anything else.

When we got home, the Bunker was clean and Mom was asleep.

"You want first shower?" Sam asked.

"No, you take it. I'm gonna soak this knee good and long when I get in there. You go first."

"Yeah, okay." He headed toward the bedroom hallway then stopped and turned back. "I was thinking about Walt," he said. "We left Roy there, with the others, so they'd get as much of a hunter's funeral as we could give them when the place blew."

"Yeah. That had to be hard," I said. It wasn't much but I didn't know what Sam was thinking or where he was going.

"Walt handled the explosives. He got us into rooms we wouldn't have been able to access otherwise, and he rigged the whole place to blow when it was over. I don't think we would've made it without him."

"Yeah…" I said again, this time putting the unspoken 'and?' into my voice.

"I thought about bringing him back here, Walt, back to the Bunker, but I didn't know what was going on with Mom, so…"

"Bring him to the Bunker?" The guy who _murdered _us? "Why?"

"I just – I don't know how long he hunted with Roy. As long as us, maybe, maybe longer, I mean since I got back into it. You know? Now Roy's gone and I just – I know what it feels like to suddenly have _nothing_."

Then he went off to take his shower, and I went to my room to rest my leg and think about what he'd said.

Yeah, we'd had nothing, me and Sam. There were plenty of times when it felt like we had less than nothing. But we had Mom back now, we had each other back, both still alive after everything we'd been through in our lives, everything we'd been through in just the past few days.

Right now, that made us luckier than any other hunter I knew.

I heard the shower turn off so I grabbed clean clothes and headed for the bathroom where I met Sam, who was clearly already a quarter of the way asleep, on his way to his room.

"You need anything?" he asked me.

"No, get some rest, Sammy. We'll just – all of us – get some rest."

"Yeah…" He nodded but he didn't move. Thinking some more about that 'what', I figured. "Just – thanks. You know? Thanks for believing I could do it."

"Of course you could do it. I taught you."

I thought I'd get serious bitch face or an epic eye roll, but Sam chuffed a laugh. "She did call me 'Dean' at first," he said. "The Brit lady running the compound."

"Well, you _were_ going all ninja, bad-ass warrior on her. It was an honest mistake."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too," he said. "I'll see you in the morning. Or –" Now he eye-rolled and gestured in the vague direction of having no idea what time it was. " – whenever."

He turned away and I watched him walk to his room. My ninja, bad-ass, exhausted little brother.

The brother I could've lost, again, tonight. Lost without even a body to have a decent hunter's funeral for. Suddenly lost, leaving me with nothing.

I pulled out my phone as I walked to the shower and ran through my contacts until I found the one I was looking for.

Walt.

His phone rang while I pictured him wondering why I was calling, and when he picked up there was a pause and a wary, "Dean…"

"Hey, uh, Walt. Um, Sam told me about Roy. I just – just calling to see how you're doing."

"Oh." He sounded surprised. "I – uh – yeah, I'm fine. You know? I mean - what else is there?"

"Yeah." _Fine, _the textbook hunter answer. "Yeah."

"So, Sam's there?" he asked. "He got back okay?"

"Yeah, Jody dropped him off a few hours ago."

"Yeah. You shoulda seen him, Dean. You woulda been proud of him, the way he got us through there and gave that old Brit lady what-for. The guy was unstoppable."

"He said he couldn't have done it without you," I answered, and got no response from Walt. "Anyway, if you need anything, call us, all right? We're here."

"No, I'm – I'm – yeah, thanks. I appreciate it."

"Yeah. Take care, Walt."

"You, too."

I hung up and went to take my shower.

The End

"**We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world-the company of those who have known suffering." ― Helen Keller, We Bereaved**

A/N and self-advertisement: a western short story I wrote has been published at RopeandWire {dotcom} in the Bullpen section. The story is The Badge, and it's published under my real name.


End file.
